The build keeps trucking along.
Skirt Armor
Here are all the skirt pieces. This time, I’m not showing them so you can see how many pieces there are - Zakus have a very predictable number of skirt sections - but rather so you can see the weathering effects I chose. Note that the piece in the top right of the picture was Photoshopped in, as I forgot to do it as part of the initial batch, and had to come back to it later:
And here it is assembled:
A couple of items of note:
- The side skirts attach with nice sturdy pegs, so this isn’t going to be a situation like the Real Grade Zaku II, where the skirts are attached with the shallowest connectors imaginable.
- I regret painting in those massive panel lines on the side skirts. I think I usually leave these alone on darker colored Zakus, and I should have done the same here.
Overall, they look pretty good. I tried going a little lighter on the weathering, and it looks good without being overwhelming.
Seam Lines
Seam lines are always a problem on model kits, but they’ve never been a problem. At least, not for me. Bandai tries fairly hard to hide panel lines in their modern kits, either by putting them in places that you won’t be looking, or by hiding them through layering. Even when they do appear, I don’t tend to mind them.
That isn’t the case with this model. Take a look at the seam lines running down the legs:
I cannot stand these. They are so long and so wide, and they simply do not blend in. To be fair, that photo was taken with the front skirts removed, but look at some of the earlier photos and you will see that even with the front skirts on, the seam lines are still quite visible.
I know there plastic modeling cements that can remove seam lines (by fusing the pieces together), but you have to sand down the part once it dries, which means you really can’t use the cement unless you plan on painting the whole thing. I’m not quite at that point yet, so I guess I’ll have to live with the seam lines whether I like them or not.
Here’s a fun fact - I’ve always known that the finished models in Gunpla manuals are painted and panel lined, but until now I never realized that they also have most of their seam lines removed. Take a look at the front cover of the manual:
In my defense, most modern kits don’t have many seam lines, so there aren’t many to notice. But here, with this older kit, their absence is just as glaring as their presence.
A Long Break
At this point in the build, I took a break in order to build the HG GM Cold Districts Type. Part of the reason is because I was really excited to build the Cold Districts, and part of the reason is because I was waiting for this to arrive in the mail:
Meet Tamiya Modeling Compount version A. As you can see, the colors in this set are extremely relevant to the kind of weathering I’m doing on this Zaku. I wanted to wait for this to arrive before resuming the build, because I wanted to see if it lead to better results. The upper torso is the first thing I used it on, so no we get to see how it came out.
Upper Torso
The upper torso looks typical, but the build is not. For some reason there is a tiny little notch in the rear chest, into which you insert a flat black piece:
On top of that, you attach a small tan square:
I wonder if there’s a reason for this. Perhaps it ties into a gimmick?
Let’s talk about the new weathering compound. Suffice to say that the results are different than what I achieved with paint and brushes on the lower body. But is it better? I honestly can’t decide:
At the very least, I can say that the weathering compound leads to a more subtle effect. It doesn’t look like the dirt and mud and sand is caked on, which may or may not be a good thing depending on the effect you want to portray. In this case, I wanted the upper body to be less weathered and crusty than the bottom half, so I think this worked out well I’m particularly happy with how the black piece in the center came out. It looks nicely sandy without being overpowered.
Lastly, here it is attached:
Now you can definitely see the difference in weathering. I am afraid that I may come to regret this later on, but for now I’m just going to push forward.